| THE REMOVAL AND DELIVERY OF THE REMAINS OF THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON BY THE GOVERNOR OF ST. HELENA TO THE PRINCE DE JOINVILLE, ON THE 16TH DAY OF OCTOBER, 1840. FROM THE ‘MAGNET,’ JAN. 11, 1841. |
Mr. Charles Knight, who thus, in the Penny Magazine, led the way in combining literature with art in a popular form, was a staunch advocate of education, and he never ceased in his endeavours to improve the condition of the masses. He said, ‘the poor man must be made a thinking man—a man capable of intellectual pleasures; he must be purified in his tastes, and elevated in his understanding; he must be taught to comprehend the real dignity of all useful employments; he must learn to look upon the distinctions of society without envy or servility; he must respect them, for they are open to him as well as to others; but he must respect himself more. The best enjoyments of our nature might be common to him and the most favoured by fortune. Let him be taught how to appreciate them. Diminish the attractions of his sensual enjoyments by extending the range of his mental pleasures.’[5] With such convictions, Mr. Knight, in 1827, joined the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, a new educational movement then just started by the Reform Party. He brought out, under its auspices, a great number of useful works, most of which were profusely illustrated. In 1832 Mr. Knight resided in the Vale of Health on Hampstead Heath. One of his neighbours was Mr. M. D. Hill, an active member of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It was a time of great political excitement, and the town was flooded with unstamped weekly publications, which in some degree came under the character of contraband newspapers, and were nearly all dangerous in principle and coarse in language. Mr. Knight and Mr. Hill often walked to town together, and their conversation naturally turned to a subject in which they both felt a special interest—the means of improving the condition of the people by the diffusion of cheap literature, and so counteracting the dangerous and offensive publications which then abounded. One morning in early spring their talk was of this kind, when Mr. Hill exclaimed, ‘Let us see what something cheap and good can accomplish! Let us have a Penny Magazine!’ Mr. Knight immediately adopted the suggestion, which was cordially approved by the Lord Chancellor Brougham; and on March 31, 1832, appeared the first number of ‘the Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.’ It was necessary to avoid making the new periodical anything like a newspaper lest it should become liable to stamp duty, and at first very little expense was incurred for illustrations, most of the engravings in the early numbers being reprinted from other works of the Society. It was not till six months had elapsed that Mr. Knight ventured into the wide field of illustration, and made the public familiar with great works of art, such as the ‘Laocoon,’ the ‘Apollo Belvedere,’ the ‘Dying Gladiator,’ the ‘Cartoons,’ &c. The best pictures of the old masters were intermingled with scenes at home and abroad, with places of renown and illustrious men of all nations and of every age.
The success of the Penny Magazine was a surprise to the publisher and an astonishment to most persons. At the end of 1832 it had reached a sale of 200,000 in weekly numbers and monthly parts, and it soon produced a revolution in popular art throughout the world. Stereotype casts of its best cuts were supplied for the illustration of publications of a similar character which appeared in Germany, France, Holland, Livonia, Bohemia, Italy, Ionian Islands, Sweden, Norway, Spanish America, and the Brazils. The entire work was also reprinted in the United States from plates sent from this country.[6]
It continued its prosperous career for nine years, when a new series was commenced, with considerable improvements in engraving and printing. Five volumes of the new series were published, but the sale declined, owing to the commencement of illustrated newspapers, and the Penny Magazine in its old form came to an end in 1845, three years after the commencement of the Illustrated London News.[7] Knight’s Penny Magazine, a smaller miscellany, commencing in January, 1846, kept up the old name for six months longer, and then it ceased to exist. In announcing its discontinuance, Mr. Knight thus closes this interesting chapter of literary history:—‘The present series of the Penny Magazine is closed, after an experience of only six months. The editor has no reason to complain of the want of public encouragement, for the sale of this series has exceeded that of its predecessor in 1845. But the sale, such as it is, is scarcely remunerative; and there are indications that it may decline rather than increase. This is a hint which cannot be mistaken. It shall not be said of his humble efforts to continue, upon an equality with the best of his contemporaries, a publication which once had a decided pre-eminence, that
“Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage.”
He leaves this portion of popular literature to be cultivated by those whose new energy may be worth more than his old experience. The Penny Magazine shall begin and end with him. It shall not pass into other hands.’
Mr. Knight attributed the falling off in the sale of the Penny Magazine to the extended sale of newspapers and the application of wood-engravings to their illustration; and in his Passages of a Working Life he relates how he first heard of the journal that was destined to succeed the Penny Magazine in the field of popular art:—‘In 1842, having occasion to be in attendance at the Central Criminal Court, my curiosity was excited by an unusual spectacle—that of an artist, seated amongst the civic dignitaries on the bench, diligently employed in sketching two Lascars, on their trial for a capital offence. What was there so remarkable in the case, in the persons, or even in the costume of the accused, that they should be made the subject of a picture? The mystery was soon explained to me. The Illustrated London News had been announced for publication on the Saturday of the week in which I saw the wretched foreigners standing at the bar. I knew something about hurrying on wood-engravers for the Penny Magazine, but a newspaper was an essentially different affair. How, I thought, could artists and journalists so work concurrently that the news and the appropriate illustrations should both be fresh? How could such things be managed with any approach to fidelity of representation unless all the essential characteristics of a newspaper were sacrificed in the attempt to render it pictorial? I fancied that this rash experiment would be a failure. It proved to be such a success as could only be ensured by resolute and persevering struggles against natural difficulties.’
Charles Knight was born at Windsor in 1791. The son of a bookseller, he very early became connected with the press. At the age of twenty-one he conducted the Windsor and Eton Express, and a few years later he became the editor of the Guardian, a London weekly paper. He afterwards started a monthly magazine called the Etonian, and amongst his contributors were Macaulay, Praed, and other clever young men who had been educated at Eton, some of whom supported him in a later venture, Knight’s Quarterly Magazine. In the midst of his varied duties as author and publisher he never lost sight of the great question of popular education, and heartily joined in the movement for repealing the taxes on knowledge. He gave expression to his views in The Struggles of a Book against Excessive Taxation and The Case of the Authors as regards the Paper Duty. He paid the enormous sum of 16,500l. for paper duty on the Penny Cyclopedia alone, and on the same work he expended 40,000l. for literature and engravings. When this great and useful work was completed Mr. Knight was entertained at a public dinner presided over by Lord Brougham, when the leading men in literature and art united to do him honour. The Penny Cyclopedia was not a commercial success, solely because of the paper duty.
Of the numerous illustrated works published by Mr. Knight, the Pictorial Bible was the most successful in a pecuniary sense, and he considered the Arabian Nights the most beautiful as regards illustrations. He was so ardent a promoter of illustrative art, that he invented a press for printing in colours, from which issued many coloured engravings for his various works, such as Old England, the Farmer’s Library, &c.
Mr. Knight died at Addlestone, Surrey, March 9, 1873, and was buried in his native town of Windsor. A marble bust of him was placed by public subscription in the Council Chamber of that town, and two scholarships, bearing his name, were founded in the school of the Stationers’ Company. It was well said of Charles Knight on the occasion of unveiling his bust at Windsor, that he set out in life with the desire to make knowledge a common possession instead of an exclusive privilege. He laboured for the good of his fellow-men rather than for the rewards of fame or fortune, and no man was more worthy of honour for his public services and his private virtues. The last time I saw him was at the grave of an old friend of his and mine; and as I recall the remembrance of his grey hair tossed in the wintry wind, I adopt in all seriousness what Douglas Jerrold said in jest, that two words would suffice for his epitaph—‘good Knight.’